The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi Page B

laugh!” he shot back. He turned and headed back to the house.
    “Okay, but at least finish telling me how to get the information I need,” I begged as he took giant steps, putting a lot of ground between us.
    “Be smart, Ottavia!” he exclaimed, not turning around. “The world is full of ways to get what you want. You just have to prioritize, figure out what’s important and what’s not. Figure out at what point you’re willing to disobey or act on your own, on the fringe, even…” He hesitated. “Even going against your own conscience.”
    My brother’s voice had a distinctly bitter tinge to it, as if he had spent his entire life disregarding his own conscience. I asked myself if I would be able to do such a thing; if it would be worth it to go off the reservation to get the information I needed. But before I could articulate these thoughts, I already knew the answer: Yes, of course I would. The only question was how.
    “I’m ready,” I said, right there in the middle of the garden. It would have been a good time to recall the expression “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.” But I didn’t.
    My brother turned around.
    “What do you want?” he bellowed. “What is it that you’re looking for?”
    “Information.”
    “You can buy information. And if that doesn’t work, you can get it yourself.”
    “How?” I asked, unsettled.
    “Investigate, make inquiries, ask the people who are in possession of the information you need. Interrogate them wisely, search the archives, the boxes of files, the offices, computers, and even the wastebaskets… And if you find something valuable, take it.”
    I spent a restless, sleepless night, tossing and turning in my childhood bed. Lucia was sleeping next to me, her leg exposed by a tug of the sheet, and she was snoring softly. Pierantonio’s words were still ricocheting around in my mind, and yet I still couldn’t see how I could do the things he suggested: Was there any good way to get information out of that rocky cliff of a man, Glauser-Röist? How could I get into the offices of the secretary of state or Monsignor Tournier? How could I search the Vatican’s computers if I didn’t have the slightest idea of how those machines worked?
    I fell asleep out of pure exhaustion as daylight seeped in through the blinds. I dreamed about Pierantonio. That I recall. But it wasn’t a pleasant dream. I was so happy the next morning when he looked refreshed, his hair still wet from a shower, celebrating Mass in our chapel.
    My father, the honoree that day, was seated in the first pew next to my mother. I looked at their backs; my father’s was more curved and fragile. I was proud of them, of the wonderful family they had created, of the love they had given their nine children and now were giving to their numerous grandchildren. I thought about how they’d spent all their lives at each other’s side. They’d had quarrels and problems, sure, but also an indestructible, inseparable union.
    At the end of the Mass, the youngest children went to play in the garden, tired from sitting still during the ceremony. The rest of us went inside for breakfast. At one end of the large dining table, grouped away from the adults, sat my oldest nieces and nephews. When I got the chance, I grabbed Giacoma and Domenico’s fourth child, Stefano, and drew him into a corner.
    “Are you studying computers, Stefano?”
    “Yes,” the boy looked at me with concern, as if I were about to attack him. Why were teenagers so weird?
    “Do you have a computer hooked up to the Internet in your room?”
    “Yes, Aunt,” he smiled with pride, relieved that his aunt wasn’t going to hurt him.
    “I need you to do me a favor.”
    Stefano and I spent the whole morning locked up in his room, drinking Coke, glued to the monitor. He was a bright boy who moved around the Internet and handled search engines with ease. By lunchtime, after giving my nephew a handsome sum of money for